Being alone in the programming world is really bad.

So this will be a post about my personal experience, about what it's like to be alone as a programmer.

So first, by alone I don't mean being alone as a person, not having friends, family or anything.

What I mean is coding alone everytime, not having any other programmers around you, not knowing other programmers, who you could discuss programming related topics with.

And unfortunately, my situation is like that as well, since I have no job yet, and I code at home alone. And here are some reasons why it is really bad.

1. Can't ask anyone for help

This is probably the worst part of it. Whenever I'm either stuck with a bug, or simply can't figure out how to solve something, I can never ask anyone for help directly. Sure I can ask a question maybe here, or mainly Stack Overflow, but that's just not the same. Even if I get an actual response, that won't happen immediately. And it's also not the same as discussing the code in person and real time.

So many times I can't solve something, it either takes more time to solve it, or I'm forced to do it in another way, which would work, but the quality of the code wouldn't be as good.

2. Can't discuss code with anyone

I kind of mentioned it above, but I thought this should be another point too.

This is also a big problem. Even if I have a working piece of code, I can't discuss it with anyone, like how it could be improved yet. If I come up with an alternative solution for something, I also can't ask for the opinion of another programmer.

3. I don't get any feedback

This one is just as bad as the previous one.
For more experienced programmers, like seniors, it's probably not as important to get feedbacks on their works and code as often as possible, since they are already well aware of their skills and capabilities as a programmer.

But for juniors like myself, it is very important to get constant feedback on our work and code, either a good or bad one.

Everytime I code something I'm actually proud of, it feels really bad that I can't brag about it to anyone, can't show it off, to get any kind of feedback, or praise. But in fact, it would feel really good if someone sometimes just said "good job"/"great code", etc.

It would also be great if someone would correct my stupid mistakes, tell me if I needlessly over complicated the code, thus constantly learning new things.

So without any feedback, everytime I write a code I believe to be good, I feel like this

4. Learning is much slower

And as I mentioned above, since no-one can correct stupid codes, mistakes, I won't know they are actually bad, and won't learn anything new. I won't know the better way to do something.

Maybe the way I coded XY thing is really terrible, but being a beginner, how would I know?

And there is no-one who would come up to me and say "what a terrible code"

Yes it would be harsh, and would probably make me feel bad at first, but hey, reality often hurts.

Of course it's not a good practice to scold a junior like this when s/he's still new to the job, but eventually it's necessary sometimes in my opinion(only if there's a reason for it).

5. It's more difficult to understand something new

Whenever I encounter something new, like a piece of code, obviously I'm trying to understand it, but many time so would fail, and just give up. And that's bad.

In cases like this, it would be really great if there was someone I could ask "hey, what does this code block do? I just can't understand it"

That's all I think

I really just shared my thoughts and experiences. Thanks for reading!